


183 Days

by onionstories



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: (but only in one part), Angst, Character Study, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Zim is Defective (Invader Zim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onionstories/pseuds/onionstories
Summary: Zim was en route to the most important mission the Empire has ever given any of its Invaders. A fitting assignment for Irk's finest—all he had to do was arrive.The six months Zim spent flying to Earth, with little more than his thoughts for company.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	183 Days

**Author's Note:**

> i actually posted something new. its a christmas miracle

The singing was easy to tune out after the first twenty minutes; that was the least of Zim’s worries.

In fact, after the singing had faded into the background, Zim had  _ no  _ worries to speak of! He was an Invader! He was Irk’s finest; the sole Irken to be trusted with a secret mission, unlike those  _ pathetic  _ excuses for Invaders who had their missions broadcasted to the entire Empire. He was  _ Zim,  _ and of  _ course  _ Zim was different from the masses. He’d known this fact since he was a mere smeet; that something was different about him—and he was Zim—so  _ different  _ meant  _ better,  _ did it not? No matter that  _ different  _ usually meant  _ not-better;  _ different meant  _ wrong, broken, defective.  _ He was Zim, and Zim was different from  _ that  _ kind of different, because Zim was Zim and Zim was his amazing Zim self and Zim was the one to be entrusted with a special secret mission to Irk-knows-where. So secret that not even his Tallest knew where. The planet was just a sticky note slapped onto the greater map of the Empire’s conquests, past, present, and future—a footnote in Irken history. 

But not for long, for once Zim got his Zim hands on it, it would be a worthy addition to the Empire. Perhaps the most important one of all—other than Devastis, the first-ever conquered planet, which had paved the way for more conquered planets, far before Zim’s time.

Perhaps—perhaps this planet could be a second Devastis! One to train soldiers farther away from where the Empire was operating nowadays, to expand their reach and make it so that less travel time was needed to get soldiers to where they needed to be…. Yes, yes that was a sufficiently brilliant use for a planet conquered by  _ Zim.  _

The training planet, cleverly named  _ Devastis 2,  _ was the subject of many doodles Zim made on his tablet, as the Voot puttered on through space.

* * *

The singing was starting to get to Zim.

GIR sometimes changed pitch, wrenching it from background noise to something that Zim had no choice but to focus on, tearing him away from his beloved plans. Did GIR not understand? Once the Tallest saw his glorious plans for  _ his  _ planet, they were bound to recognize the amazingness of Zim! Did GIR not understand that he was messing this up for Zim? Messing it up so horribly with his horrible song? 

Zim was ready to throttle that horrible robot, gift from the Tallest or not. It was sabotaging him, sabotaging his amazing Zim self just like how everything else in his life had sabotaged him: his height, his overzealousness, his  _ height,  _ his voice—which Zim  _ did  _ notice made others grimace, antennae flattening on their heads to try and hear less of Zim, but that just meant that they could not handle the amazingness that is  _ Zim,  _ but it was still  _ rude,  _ and it still sabotaged him, same as his height and his overzealousness and the fact that Tallers never,  _ ever  _ paid him any mind unless it was to mock, and the fact that he was  _ different,  _ and different usually meant  _ not-better, wrong, broken, defective—  _

And Zim wondered if he would have better luck in life if he was not  _ different,  _ if he was the same as any other Irken. Perhaps if he was taller, less annoying, had a more pleasing voice, did not protest,  _ then _ his Tallest would recognize him. But no, then there would be nothing  _ to  _ recognize, and Zim seethed. He was  _ amazing,  _ why could they not  _ see  _ it? Did they not see how  _ hard  _ Zim worked? How he constantly pushed himself in the Academy, training until his whole body screamed from pain and he was ready to pass out? How he practiced with his blaster for so long that his hands chafed and cracked, even through his gloves? How he did physical training for so long and with such overzealousness that some nights, after curfew, he had to turn his boots upside-down and drain the blood out of them? How he practiced maneuvering with his PAK legs so much that the entire damn PAK felt like it was going to tear out of his back and take the ports with it? How could they not  _ see  _ it? It was  _ right there _ — Zim was the  _ ultimate  _ Invader! He worked hard—harder than any other Invader in the Academy, and because he was  _ small,  _ it meant  _ nothing?  _

GIR had changed pitch again, snapping Zim out of his thoughts, and with fists balled he unleashed a stream of curses on the little robot— some in Irken, some in Vortian, some in the native tongue of the Screw-Heads, and every language in between. 

And for two hours, the singing stopped, the only sounds in the deep vacuum of space consisting of the low hum of the Voot’s engines, Zim’s growling, and GIR’s quiet whimpering.

* * *

Zim had struck up a deal with GIR: the song would be paused when Zim was asleep. 

So whenever Zim wanted some silence, he’d recline the chair and pretend to be asleep, burrowing in the sole blanket he kept in the Voot. It was only supposed to be for emergencies—if he suddenly found himself in a colder-than-usual climate, or if the temperature controls of his Voot failed for the schmillionth time. His PAK could regulate his body temperature, of course, but it was useless against the crushing cold of space seeping into the Voot. Zim had bought the thermal blanket after the first-ever instance of the temperature controls failing— he still had night terrors of the biting cold, seeping into his skin, then his muscles, then his bones, rendering him unable to move, unable to steer and find refuge, teeth chattering and lungs closing up, and joints feeling like they’d fused together. 

But that was then, and this was now. Zim curled under the blanket, ever-so-slightly relaxing at the silence, eyes falling half-lidded as he thought of his precious plans to pass the time. Devastis 2 would surely be marvelous— a mysterious and challenging planet to conquer being molded into a shining gem in the empire, and by Zim’s own design no less! Soon, it wouldn’t matter that he was too short or too loud or too obnoxious or too  _ different.  _ Soon those things would be  _ celebrated,  _ celebrated like they deserved to be, as Zim would be hailed as a hero, as the Invader all should emulate, as the ideal Irken, and soon everyone would be speaking like Zim, acting like Zim, and Zim would not be  _ different  _ anymore, would not be mocked anymore…

Because that’s how it was supposed to work, was it not? You prove yourself and you get recognition. But had Zim not proven himself already? Had it not been enough to break and bleed in front of his Commander, to lose sleep bandaging his wounds only to soldier on and continue training the following day? Had it not been enough to never stop until he was out of breath, out of energy, until he felt like he would surely die? Is this what was expected of him? Nobody in his class at the Academy had done nearly as much as he had, and yet  _ they  _ got all the accolades;  _ they  _ got the planets with the comfiest couches;  _ they  _ got the SIR units that would listen when told to stop singing some infernal song— so what was Zim doing  _ wrong?  _ If he was taller, would his Commander have presented his bruised and bloodied form to the class and said  _ "See? You should all be more like THIS!”  _ If he was taller, would his Commander have told him to stop killing himself, that destroying his body would do nothing to make him a better soldier? If he was less obnoxious, would they have seen his efforts? Would someone have cared, just once, about the so-called amazing Zim?

Thinking about all of this made Zim’s body ache in a way it hadn’t since the Academy, the silence of the Voot only serving to remind him of the silence he got at the Academy—the silence he always got when presenting his achievements, the silence that nobody else, not even the other Smallers, were ever presented with. 

* * *

The singing continued, as it had for the past four months, and it seemed to resemble more a funeral march nowadays. 

The Voot would not last forever; this was a simple fact of life and technology. Eventually, it would either detect a planet or putter out in the unforgiving vacuum of space, leaving Zim to putter out with it as he slowly froze to death, or starved, or simply couldn’t take the waiting and blasted himself in the head.

He clutched his stomach, opting to preserve what rations he had left. Zim was trained to handle starvation, like all Invaders were, and Zim wondered if all Invaders struggled with the sensations the way that he did; stomach pained and head swirling. There was a horrible wailing in the Voot, drowning out the song, and Zim’s addled mind couldn’t for the life of him figure out where it was coming from as he leaned his head on the Voot’s window, mouth open for some reason and drool slipping out of it.

His boots had been discarded, thrown to the floor of the Voot as Zim looked at his bare feet, running his gloved claws against the puckered skin. Each scar reminded him of the white-hot searing pain of intense physical training—a leg colliding with the ground one too many times, for one too many hours, making the chafed and abused skin burst in a fountain of blood.

But Zim could not stop. He was Irk’s finest Invader—at least he fancied himself to be, back then—and no shining example of Irken military excellence would let a stupid little paper-cut impede his progress! 

But they hadn’t been stupid little paper-cuts, now had they? They’d been blisters that burst—tens of them at once—physical marks Zim had to show for his intense training; they’d been real, tangible proof that he’d worked hard. Proof that he’d  _ needed  _ this, more than he’d needed anything in his young life, and that he’d give up anything to achieve it. 

_ It wasn’t fair, _ Zim thought as he leaned on the window and trembled. And it truly wasn’t; it wasn’t fair, was it? Zim had already done everything he possibly could, but he was too  _ different _ —too loud and annoying and  _ defective _ —to ever amount to anything. All he would amount to is a stain on the Empire that was quickly washed out. He saw the disdain in his Tallests’ eyes, saw it like he saw his own pathetic reflection on the Voot’s glass, with deep, heavy eyebags and a uniform that was just a smidge too big for him now, antennae drooped and eyes puffy, disgraceful tears streaming down his face and his mouth open in a wail that shredded his throat, which was fine by him—perhaps he’d tear it to ribbons and become a mute. His Tallest were sure to like  _ that  _ development, just like they’d like the fact that he would freeze to death in the cold reaches of space, or that he’d commit the most disgraceful act an Irken could ever commit and shoot himself before he could ever experience that torture.

Perhaps Zim could call them, right before his Voot died. Perhaps they’d like to see his death. They surely would love to see Zim suffer like the pathetic, little,  _ defective  _ disgrace he was. Perhaps they would broadcast his death to the Empire. Perhaps in his final moments, he could hear the Empire cheer for him, as he gave them what they’d wanted all along and finally pulled the trigger. 

* * *

Space was big. Vast.  _ Infinite.  _ It held countless marvels, and Zim gladly let his little SIR unit sing as he held him in his arms, staring out the window and marveling at how small he felt in the face of it all.

His Voot was low on fuel, and they were soon to approach their sixth month in space. He would die among the stars and forever be entombed in its beauty, him and his defective little SIR unit, united in broken-ness, united in their fate. 

For he was Zim, and he was defective, and that was a fact of life— and GIR was defective, too, and they would die among the stars, together, along with Zim’s old, decrepit Voot, itself a defective piece of junk, but one that had served Zim well, a monument to Irken broken-ness, left to be found, or perhaps to never be found. 

Zim found himself stroking GIR’s head with one hand, looking through his old drawings of Devastis 2 with the other. It felt like a lifetime ago, and he felt himself swell with emotion as he looked at it all: schematics of training grounds and tall, imposing buildings, and statues of himself seemingly taunting him. It would have been amazing, as amazing as Zim used to believe himself to be—or would it have been? Zim did not know, and he knew that he did not know. But it was fun to fantasize about what could have been, and what he knew now that would never be. 

For the Empire had no place for defectives, and their defective little robots, in their defective little ships, and their defective little plans for their pity-given suicide missions. 

Perhaps Zim’s place was in the stars, nestled in the vast infinite, far beyond the reach of the Empire. In his last weeks alive, he belonged somewhere, for once in his not-so-amazing Zim life, and it was here, a tiny piece of something much bigger than himself: a cold, celestial presence that had no judgements or pity for defectives, or even a concept of defectiveness at all. 

Soon he would be cold, so very cold, but for now, he felt warm nestled in his blanket with his SIR unit, his GIR, in his Voot which, perhaps if seen from far away, could resemble one of schmillions upon schmillions of stars. The lights of the cockpit glowed with an intensity that paled compared to the glow of the real stars, but it was  _ there  _ nonetheless, and the cosmos could not deny that Zim existed, just for a brief moment, as a part of it.

* * *

There was a planet ahead, and the song was over. 

Zim marveled at how silly he had been those past months. Of course the Tallest would not have forsaken him! He was  _ Zim,  _ after all! His fuel was almost out, he only had enough left to quickly—  _ quickly—  _ find a suitable place for his base of operations; surely that was by design, his all-knowing Almighty Tallest surely had known how far away the planet was! 

GIR had done his duty well, surveilling the planet and aiding with their brilliant disguises— a SIR unit that fulfilled its purpose couldn’t  _ possibly  _ be defective, what was Zim  _ thinking,  _ doubting his Tallest like he had been! Silly, silly Zim; long-distance space travel truly does scramble an Irken’s brain if they are not careful— and Zim foolishly had  _ not  _ been careful, allowing his mind to lead him astray into a maze of  _ lies!  _

But it would not happen again. No, Zim would not let it happen again. He was a good soldier—a good Irken—and good Irkens have their complete faith in their Tallests, no matter what they do or say, or any odd looks they give them! He was Zim, and Zim was amazing, no matter what anyone did or said to make him doubt his amazing Zim self. Never again, never again would he fall for the trap born from isolation and crazed, circular thinking. Never again would Zim allow his amazing Zim self to fall down a path of  _ lies.  _

He was Zim. He was Irk’s finest Invader. He did not bend and break and bleed to be reduced to  _ nothing,  _ to go unacknowledged, unapplauded, unrecognized. He was Zim, he was amazing, and that was simply a fact of life.

This planet—  _ Earth—  _ would be his, and as he called his Tallest to tell them the good news, he saw the horror on their faces—horror at Zim taking so long to call, of course. He could have died in the vast coldness of space, a fact his Tallest were sure to be well aware of. They must have been sick with worry, losing sleep over the possibility that the greatest asset to the Empire had perished alone, without having completed his highly important mission. Surely Operation Impending Doom 2 would fail without this planet’s subjugation, and surely Zim was the only Invader fit to bring it to its knees.

For he was Zim, and Zim was amazing, and once he brought this planet to its knees, the Empire would sing his praises, because he was Zim and he was the best Invader to ever exist, and this was simply a fact of life.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr. i post a lot here im funny i promise](https://irkenheretic.tumblr.com)   
>  [my twitter. i dont post much here but in my defense i have like 10 followers](https://twitter.com/irkenheretic)
> 
> hope yall liked that trip into hell :) leave a comment if u did.... itll be like a christmas present 4 me....


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